7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

These board members are either caught in a web of lies or are completely ignorant. Arcadia kids organize their own runs without O'Brien being present during the dead period and on Sundays, and this has been open knowledge for quite a while (he talks about it when he speaks at the LA84 clinics). From everything I've heard, the board members did not do due diligence and ask the coach nor anyone associated directly with the program about these "allegations".

These board members are either caught in a web of lies or are completely ignorant. Arcadia kids organize their own runs without O'Brien being present during the dead period and on Sundays, and this has been open knowledge for quite a while (he talks about it when he speaks at the LA84 clinics). From everything I've heard, the board members did not do due diligence and ask the coach nor anyone associated directly with the program about these "allegations".

Sunday runs are not required but are encouraged or recommended. They do keep track who goes. Arcadia does their mileage weekly based, not daily based. They can do the miles whenever they want as long as they get in their work. Can't run on Sunday, then spread it out throughout the week, it may be harder, but c'est la vie. They can also run on their own.

Let's say you have a task of 700 pages of reading a week and the most efficient way would be 100 pages every day. If you have a conflict and know you can't read on a certain day or don't want to, then it may be less efficient to read 116 for 6 days vs 700 in 7, but that's up to you.

By the way, no way no how would 100% of kids on a team show up and run on Sunday. All their kids still race every weekend and they don't boot kids off the team for it. Not enough time in the day or week to be policing how many miles each kid actually runs, there's only so much you can do.

Curiously, I wonder how many coaches who visit this site also have their kids run Sundays. I mean, there is a very successful NCS program where you can view the workouts and, yeah, Sunday, "ON YOUR OWN: LSD 50-75, *** Routine, Stretch," and the kids keep a running log on line.

O'Brien is not some sort of island to himself. There are hundreds of programs, maybe thousands??, that have their kids get in the long run "on their own" on Sunday. And if they don't do it? Well, usually they are encouraged to do so, but they are not booted.

I personally do not have my kids run on Sunday because I think a day of rest is crucial, but the board using this is...well...a scapegoat, just like the painting X's on lockers. They are grasping at straws because they are skirting around the real issue that O'Brien's philosophy simply does not coincide with theirs. They want a sheep. O'Brien is a wolf.